


don't you want to be found? don't you want that?

by vanilla_alia (ashheaps)



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:42:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashheaps/pseuds/vanilla_alia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boarding School AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't you want to be found? don't you want that?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bright Eyes : "The Joy in Discovery"
> 
> _why do you lay in the grass? / don't you want to be found? / don't you want that?_

It’s not that Patrick dislikes school. It’s sort of forbidden to dislike Saint Anne’s. His grandfather went there and Patrick’s pretty sure it’s written in his will that Patrick complete his education there, even though it’s costing his parents a small fortune apiece. Ever since they split up it’s been easier for them, financially, to keep Patrick at Saint Anne’s. 

Patrick’s roommate Joe keeps him well enough company and he makes him do things Patrick would never do on his own, like go to the football games and play in pick-up squash rounds on the South Quad, which is where the bane of Patrick’s existence sort of hangs out most of the time.

The thing about Peter, otherwise known in the faculty lounge as Mr. Wentz or, more endearingly, Spitfire, is that he’s amazingly nice to Patrick. Almost overly so. He’s Patrick’s Peer-to-Peer Mentor, a program all third and fourth years have to participate in where a fourth year (Peter in this case) takes an impressionable third year (Patrick here) under their wing so as the third year (Patrick) might be more assured of the tumults of fourth year and it’s various pressures and expectations. It also does a fabulous job at keeping the boys from sneaking out on Saturdays by requiring a monitored pair meeting that night. For real, they have sign in sheets and teachers checking the windows of intimate conference rooms every five minutes to make sure the two boys aren’t playing paper football or climbing out the window.

At first Peter was less than enthused about serving as a Mentor, coming off the cynical and despondent tone of his third year. But by their second organized meeting, Peter really picked up speed with his required responsibilities. Patrick finds that Peter asks him questions but ends up answering them himself when Patrick gives bland answers or shrugs, unable to foster an opinion on which Lacrosse club is going to dominate this season. Peter seems determined to get Patrick out of his proverbial shell that all his elders seem to think he’s hiding in, and Patrick’s pretty sure Peter’s collaborating with Joe in his endeavor.

Joe is Patrick’s understood best friend. They were assigned roommates first year through the lottery and they’ve requested each other every year since. The faculty likes Joe because he’s one of five Jewish kids at Saint Anne’s. The administrators discovered at some point within the past few years that they must enroll a certain percentage of minority students to participate in inter-school athletic leagues. Patrick suspects Joe gets a decent break on tuition, not that he needs it or anything (his father is a third generation steel company owner), but because Joe has good test scores and, well, because he’s Jewish. Joe’s really good at science and Patrick doesn’t think he’s very good at anything. Which Peter quickly negates when Patrick slips and tells him his thoughts.

So it’s not that Patrick _dislikes_ Saint Anne’s, per se, but this whole “discovering the man you are inside” campaign that everyone from Peter and Joe to his grandfather and his French teacher are pushing is really starting to grate on Patrick’s patience.

++

Patrick sees his dad’s father exactly four times a year; Alumni visitation week in the fall, over Winter Break (usually around Christmas, depending on when his mom’s parents have a free week in between their retirement tour of the world), Family Spring Picnic and the entire month of July every summer. And every time Patrick’s grandfather asks about school, he shares the same clichéd anecdote with Patrick: “I’m telling you, Patrick, at Saint Anne’s I really found myself. It’s the greatest journey you’ll ever encounter. I promise you that.”

Patrick’s gotten really good at smiling maturely and agreeing with fervor—a skill learned no doubt from Semester Reviews in which he’s alone in front of a table of professors and has to deliver some prepared speech about everything he’s learned in the ways of life’s lessons the previous semester. All the professors smile when Patrick tells them the exact same thing: “I feel like I’m really finding myself.”

++

It’s at the fifth meeting, just at the beginning of October, the first Saturday of the month, that Patrick tells Peter about his frustration with the whole burden of morals and maturation and the definite nature of this stupid place called High School that Patrick finds completely exhausting and confusing. Peter, never the existentialist, suggests Patrick attend the Pumpkin Bash. It’s the annual dance where two bus loads of Saint Mary’s junior and senior girls attempt to shape up a gym full of boys who’d rather be anywhere else but were somehow convinced, dragged or promised some sort of illegal substance. And it’s Patrick who flat out refuses.

“Stop thinking about all that meta-high-school stuff and live it, you know? Sometimes the best way to understand is to stop trying to understand.”

“You have a point, but I’m not going.” 

“Please? Go for me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Darren thinks I’m not involved enough with you.” Darren Wishek is the fourth year counselor and overseer of the Mentoring program who makes his students refer to him by his first name. There was a controversy in the Administration late last year over renewing Darren’s contract on the grounds of him being “unprofessional and overly casual” with the students, citing him responsible for the diminishing respect from the boys. But he’s back this year, so Patrick assumes everyone has forgotten about it too.

“I’m sorry, no chance.”

“C’mon, it’ll be good for you. You can meet a girl, dance a little, go for a walk, tell her she’s pretty and boom! You’re at first base in the South Quad.” Pete waggles his eyebrows emphatically.

“I’m not interested.”

“I’ll come by your dorm that night. Help you pick out clothes, do your hair, whatever.”

“I don’t need an escort.”

“So you’ll go?” Patrick sighs and looks down, mulling the idea over.

“I’ll think about it.”

++

It turns out Saint Anne is the saint of lost items (‘we’re Lost Boys!’ as Peter has brightly claimed). Things start to make a little more sense in Patrick’s mind as he goes on, but he can’t quite pin down what he’s supposed to be looking for.

++

Fortunately for Patrick, Monsieur Bedeau assigns an insane amount of composition work for the boys to do over the weekend of the dance. Unfortunately for Patrick, Peter was given a copy of his class schedule at the beginning of Mentors and it seems to be the only piece of paper that Peter hasn’t lost, so Peter knows he doesn’t have another French class for exactly four days. So promptly at six thirty, Peter shows up at Patrick’s dorm in Wexley Hall (second floor) to find Patrick dejectedly struggling between a Pocket Professor French Dictionary and a largely blank page in a thick spiral notebook. And he’s still wearing his uniform, which makes Peter feel a bit sorry for the kid.

Joe turns to Peter the moment the door opens, eyes wide like he’s been caught.

“Pete, please,” Joe says, coming over and holding out the breast of his crew neck, “tell me you don’t smell anything.” Peter sniffs tentatively and scrunches his face.

“You smell like pot.” Joe flips out a little (a lot) and darts out of the room, presumably for the hall showers. Patrick fields Peter’s questioning gaze with a shrug.

“He did one hit with Travis before running back here. He’s been freaking for a good few minutes. I don’t even know what pot smells like.” 

“Interesting choice of apparel for the dance. Which, might I remind you, begins in exactly twenty-nine minutes.” Patrick sighs and sets the Pocket Professor spine-up on his quilt.

“I really don’t want to go.” Pete curiously opens the closet by Patrick’s bed, pulling out a burnt orange button-up.

“Maybe you could wear this instead or that Oxford there. Complements your skin tone more than, oh say—white.”

“Peter.”

“With black pants, you’ve got those, right?” Peter shoves hangers side to side. Patrick sighs again and rubs at the back of his neck.

“You know I—” 

“Am going to have a kick ass time? Of course.” Peter interrupts. He sees the desperate look on Patrick’s face and it’s like he’s pleading with every last ounce of his pride. “You can leave at eight if it’s lame.”

++

Patrick’s dad lives at a posh bungalow twenty minutes by car from Saint Anne’s. Patrick really likes eating take-out with him and then doing something menial like watching HBO or a lacrosse game on ESPN over the weekends, just so he gets a break from campus for a little while. It usually takes Patrick thirty-five minutes to ride his bike to his dad’s house, forty-five if the scenery is too pretty to ignore. 

But it only takes Patrick one poorly timed visit to find his dad’s girlfriend wearing an all-too-familiar and entirely too-large-for-her dress shirt in the living room eating straight from a Chinese paper container while the murmur of the shower pipes whoosh through the house. He doesn’t visit his dad much anymore. At least, not without calling first.

++

As Patrick had accurately predicted, he’s left to fend for himself halfway through the dance as Peter seemingly forgets that Patrick even exists. Patrick sits slumped into a chair facing the dance floor. Saint Mary’s has a Dance Planning committee that shows up an hour before the rest of the girls in order to transform the Saint Anne’s gym into something short of spectacular. Patrick’s not much for interior design, much less high school dance decoration, but he’s pretty sure a few streamers and strategically placed balloons are nothing to write home about. Since the Dance Planning committee is left alone for their grand unveiling, Patrick suspects there is a handful of girls currently dancing that got a jump start on getting trashed.

Patrick notices an attractive girl dancing with Joe, another one dancing with Travis just inches away. Joe looks pretty focused on the movement of his hips against the girl’s ass, so Patrick doesn’t interrupt. Patrick also notices a rather solitary (maybe reserved?) pretty girl watching him from the outside of a circle of girls dancing friendly with each other. He gives her a weak smile, but averts his eyes quickly, just people-watching. He keeps tabs on the play list of annoyingly bump-and-grind-y rap songs as well as the clock. As the long hand tickles the ten, he thinks he might just get away unscathed. He starts planning the awful loser things he’s going to do once he gets back to his dorm (call his mom in Illinois, search Princeton Review for a college far away with minimal athletic teams, maybe he can squeeze in a quick jerk off if Joe’s night keeps progressing like this) but to no avail. Because seriously, if Peter had just waited thirty seconds later to find him, Peter would have been eating Patrick’s dust as he ran back to the dorm in his dress shoes. 

Peter suggests they go for a walk; Patrick supposes that means Pete is either incredibly remorseful for forcing Patrick into this, or he’s trying to amp up Patrick’s self-perception with a lot of attention. Teachers have delightfully decided to hold their own social event in one of the smaller gyms instead of chaperoning properly, so once the two boys are just outside of earshot of the gym, they’re all alone. Patrick puts his hands in his pockets and just follows Peter, who is wordless, surprisingly. Patrick notices that Peter’s shirt has been untucked and his hair is clumped in damp pieces about his head.

They end up at the stadium and it looks so odd to Patrick, all dark and empty. The paint from last weekend’s game is dull as it traces the outlines of the field, marking achievements and losses like some endless tally. Peter stops at the forty yard line and flops downward, laying face-up. Patrick lowers himself tentatively; the grass is dry and cold. Peter rests his head in his palms and splits his stare between the black sky and Patrick’s cross-legged form. Patrick picks at the grass, pulling out strands and peeling them in two. They’re silent for what feels like forever to Patrick.

“I’m sorry I made you go, even though you didn’t want to.” Peter whispers over the distant cicadas.

“It’s okay.” Patrick starts.

“No, it’s not. Don’t lie. I’m sorry.” Peter repeats.

“Um, I…accept your apology?” Patrick lets his voice hang there on the up-beat. Peter breathes something that sounds like a laugh and closes his eyes.

“Are we friends?” Peter’s voice is low and quiet. Patrick pauses before answering, counting beats.

“I, I think we’re getting there. I guess.” Pete’s peaceful expression falters for a brief flash, but he covers it over before Patrick can identify the emotion. Hurt? Surprise? Maybe disappointment.

“I don’t want to be friends,” Peter says bravely. Patrick’s confused.

“Well, okay. That’s alright, you know? You’re older than me and-”

“Not like that,” Peter interrupts. “I-. I think I-” He stops and inhales unsteadily, deeply. 

“What’s wrong?” Patrick’s back is slumped forward, fingers tangled in the trimmed grass.

“I feel a bunch of things right now.” Coming from anyone else, Patrick thinks, he would roll his eyes. Maybe change the channel or find some excuse to leave the conversation. But coming from Peter, Patrick finds himself interested. Intrigued even, maybe wanting.

“Like what?” Peter’s breath is audible.

“Lots of emotions.” Is all he offers.

“Tell me some.” Peter sighs and if Patrick sets his line of sight on the blackness of the empty fields behind the exhale, Patrick can see the smoky swirl of oxygen. He’s never enjoyed autumn until this moment.

“Tired.”

“I don’t think that’s an emotion,” Patrick points out. Peter cracks one eye open to meet Patrick. He smiles and Patrick does so too. “Try again.” Peter keeps his eyes open.

“I feel really sentimental.”

“Why?”

“It’s my last Pumpkin Bash.”

“You can’t honestly tell me that you’re going to miss that, I’m sorry.” Patrick continues to pick at the grass and Peter laughs again.

“Yeah, you’re right. But it’s the concept, you know?” Patrick nods. “And I feel sort of stressed out. My application to Yale isn’t going as great as I thought it would.” Patrick knows Peter’s expected to enroll to Yale in the fall, possibly even stay in the same dorm his grandfather stayed in so many years ago—right there where all the engineers studied, possibly even lived. 

Peter hasn’t had the courage to tell his family he likes English, likes writing. He has a vast but shielded vocabulary and he’s the senior editor for the school newspaper. But he can’t get through a chapter of Advanced Physics homework without pulling strands of hair from his scalp and pushing back tears. Patrick knows this because apparently Peter did have the courage to tell him at their last meeting, just after Peter’s dad had scolded him over the phone for dropping from Advanced Trig to (just plain) Calculus. (“It’s ridiculous. It’s like he thinks I’m some genius, you know? Like I’m just an extension of him. Couldn’t even give me my own name, that’s his too.”)

Peter waits for Patrick to give him some response, nonetheless.

“Well, just do all you can, you know? Because you’ve worked hard and whatever happens happens.” Peter blinks and looks away distantly.

“Yeah, I guess.” He doesn’t buy that logic. “And I feel incapable.”

“Of what?”

“Being a good example.”

“For who?”

“You.” Patrick looks down at his hands. “I mean, you know, as your mentor and stuff.”

“You’re a fine example for me,” Patrick reassures. He can feel Peter looking at him, trying to catch his eyes.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Really.”

“No, because,” Peter closes his eyes as he takes another deep breath. “because I feel guilty.”

“Why?” They’re speaking just above whispers.

“Because I’m keeping a secret from you.”

“You can tell me.” Patrick waits and waits for a response; it feels like Peter is searching for words, or has already found them and is urging his mouth to make them real.

“I’m just going to say it.” Peter barely lets it settle into the air, “I’m gay.”

“Well that’s not-”

“And I sweet-talked Darren into pairing me with you for Mentors. Because I know you are too.” And any word of reassurance or support that Patrick was going to utter slips out of his mind like sand. He sits, hunched over and gaping at Peter like he’s morphing before his eyes. “Only you and Darren know. I couldn’t-, I can’t tell anyone else.” If Patrick didn’t know any better, he might think Peter’s so very close to crying.

“How’d you know about me?” Patrick asks, voice inevitably breaking and squeaked. Peter’s rubbing at his eyes, getting control of himself.

“I just, I just knew, I suppose.”

“Can everyone tell?” Patrick’s shoulders are loose; his body feels like it’s sinking into the soft green.

“No, of course not. Takes one to know one, right?” Patrick would have laughed had this been any other situation. But right now all he wants is to crawl into bed, naked and cold, and wake up on a Saturday afternoon. Peter laughs breathily at his own joke.

“So there’s that,” he says in imitation. Patrick’s head starts to hurt and his posture is slackening; he might need to lie down soon. But there’s no guarantee he’ll ever sit up properly again if he does go horizontal, and he knows he doesn’t want to be found on the football field by the groundskeeper with tear tracks down his cheeks. 

“Please say something,” Peter begs. He sits up gracefully and tries to meet Patrick’s eyes again. He’s mirroring Patrick’s position right in front of him, inches away.

“Patrick.” Peter reaches out and finds Patrick’s hand on the grass. His fingers are foreign and amidst all the embarrassment of his deepest secret uncovered, Patrick realizes it’s the first time in their two months of friendship that they’ve ever physically touched.

“Patrick.” Peter says again, more certain. Patrick feels Peter’s free hand tracing the hairs on the side of his head. Patrick looks up in a moment of bravery and thinks he notices Peter’s face moving closer, closer. Thinks he feels unfamiliar lips on his own, nervous and quivering; the hand over his is sweaty despite the foreboding fall weather around them. He gets more certain of the actuality, the presence of Pete in his space. Like this, he thinks, feels good. Maybe lets his lips open a little, just to see, figure out what it’s really like. He notices the tongue that slinks inside his mouth and swirls delicately, notes how it feels no different than his own tongue has felt for his entire life, but finds himself taking careful inventory of the texture, each prominent taste bud, every cell. 

The hand that fingered his sideburns moves to the back of his head and the tip of his nose hits the apple of the cheek attached to the mouth kissing him. He feels the back of his neck being stroked gently and the heavy drag of reeling breath across his cheek. God, he thinks, this is so nice. Guiltily, Patrick moves his free hand to the bent leg in front of him and touches, contently. Each time the lips against his open and close, it feels like a brand new kiss, like it’s only just begun. Patrick wants to stay here forever, wants to learn everything right here. 

The desire to memorize every detail, to mark some tangible labels for his mind to recall later when he’s alone in the dark, that desire moves his hand along the sturdy muscle of the thigh his hand rests on. He doesn’t know what he expects when he reaches the hip, but as his hand gets closer and the body under him shivers violently, Patrick’s kinesthetic senses kick in. His backside is nearly numb from leaning forward into the kiss. His wrist is bent strangely, pinned to the grass by another’s hand. His chest is tight and his nostrils are sore from sniffing icy air. Goosebumps cover his body and a thick and chilling bead of sweat is riding down his spine. Low in his belly, he feels a bouncing flitter of excitement and long-ignored yearning for attention.

He pulls back from the kiss and realizes its Peter he’s been kissing. Peter who once told Patrick he didn’t feel comfortable in his own skin one Saturday evening when he had tugged at his new haircut like it would grow back faster. Peter who attends Saint Anne’s on shady money from his grandfather. It’s the Peter who is ashamed to share his surname with the Wentz Terrace in the library where first years tap out term papers on school computers. Peter who wanted Patrick to go to the dance tonight and watched him change his clothes earlier in his dorm. It’s Peter who is crying and mumbling something that looks like Patrick’s name on his swollen lips. 

Patrick snaps his hands towards his body and shakes his head, getting off the ground in record time. He starts walking, leaving Peter sitting on the forty yard line. Starts walking blindly in the night towards his dorm; he hears noise behind him and the muted response of grass accommodating Peter’s shift in stance. Without even turning around to see if Peter is following him, Patrick picks up his pace to a sprint. He crosses over the football field, past the practice soccer pitch and the South Quad and the gym where music is tilting through the cracks under the doors. He races by red brick building after building, hears distant fast-paced footsteps behind him on the sidewalk and picks up his own speed. He doesn’t stop until he gets to the second floor of Wexley, where he opens his door and finds his room gloriously empty. He doesn’t even turn on the lights, but he finds his bed all the same.

++

Patrick has been at Saint Anne’s since he was eleven years old. He did the dual-residence thing between his mom’s house (which he used to call “our house”) and his dad’s apartment in downtown Chicago. His parents came to the mutual decision (with much pressure from Patrick’s paternal grandfather) that enrolling Patrick at Saint Anne’s for middle school would be better for him than a private school in Chicago. Patrick’s father had wanted to leave Chicago for a few years since the divorce and decided that he’d move with Patrick, so Patrick wouldn’t feel like he was being sent away and ignored. The middle school campus of Saint Anne’s is called the Saint Anne’s Transitional School and is a thirty minute car ride from the Saint Anne’s high school campus—Saint Anne’s Preparatory School.

Patrick did well in middle school; he had great grades, a bunch of close friends, even a sort-of girlfriend who he met at the Bunny Hop, their only mixer with Saint Mary’s girls, at the end of the Spring Term of Patrick’s last year in Transitional. Since they were taking the same classes, she would call Patrick at eleven at night and they would quiz each other over the phone between long stints of flirty conversation. They never really promised to call each other every day over summer break because she knew Patrick split his summer three ways—June with his mother in Chicago, July with his Grandfather and August with his dad. But they tried to keep in touch for the first month. Then conversation just became dull and Patrick gradually stopped expecting her to call.

Enjoying the freedom of summer, Patrick spent a lot of time just thinking to himself. He had been by himself on his Grandfather’s lake with a new guitar his grandpa had bought so he could be entertained by Patrick’s musical compositions. Patrick was sitting under a large tree with its branches hanging over the lake when he started thinking about the girl from Saint Mary’s and how he’d never really told her that he liked her, per se, but that he just enjoyed talking to her. He had known for a while that he didn’t exactly desire girls, didn’t really talk or think about them like his friends did at Transitional. But he just assumed he would mature into it or something.

And he realized, that summer, sitting under the tree with his guitar, like something straight out of Huck Finn, that he really didn’t like girls a lot, like that. When he returned for fall term in September, he felt different. He didn’t connect with his old friends and since they had discovered their thrill for breaking rules, Patrick just really did not want to bother adapting to their new personalities. Joe came to Saint Anne’s for high school and he and Patrick clicked on the first day when moving and settling furniture with their dads. Yet still, Patrick couldn’t help but feel different. Not only because he was out of Transitional and into the real Saint Anne’s, but because he had let his mind work how it wanted, looking at boys and thinking about them a couple steps beyond friendship. 

One afternoon in December, Joe walked in on Patrick, hunched over his laptop in his desk chair and jerking off with two decisively male figures frozen in compromising positions on his computer screen. Joe, being Joe, just sort of stood there, door already half shut with him inside the room. He left with an “I’ll let you finish up, open the door when you’re ready.” 

Obviously a little shaken, after twenty unsuccessful minutes of thoroughly trying to get back into it, Patrick just gave up and shut his laptop screen. He opened the door and flopped on his bed face-down, trying to come up with the best way to explain to Joe the whole situation with him and guys and whatever. Minutes later Joe returned to their room and shut the door firmly behind him, clearing his throat. Patrick sat up and started.

“Listen, Joe, I’m sorry you had to-”

“No,” Joe interrupted, “it’s okay, really. I understand.”

“You do?” Patrick cocked an eyebrow. Joe sat down roughly on his own bed, leafing through a stack of Sports Illustrated magazines on the floor before finding one he was satisfied enough to read.

“Yeah, totally. You follow a few wrong links and then wow, you know? And you’re too worked up to bother going back to where you came from, which is impossible since you just get more stuff like that and then you’d have to start all over from the beginning, so you just do what you’ve got to do to finish it up. Happens to me all the time.” And while that was slightly reassuring (and even more decidedly humorous) for Patrick, he was really too surprised to do anything but agree with half voice and get back to his geometry homework.

So Patrick just sort of coasted through first and second years like that; hush about his developing preferences and keeping any new friends, besides Joe, an arms length away from him. He focused on school work as to not upset his family and writing music, which he only did when everyone else was out of earshot.

++

Patrick wakes up at nine o’clock with Joe’s alarm, but no Joe. Since nightly room checks have been forgone in favor of their advisors doing mysterious things in the gym with other faculty members, Patrick assumes that Joe has crashed in someone else’s room. Either that or he’s drowned at the bottom of the school’s lake with only his textbooks to anchor him soundly to the murky bottom. Patrick laughs at his own sinister and rather funny-for-nine-o’clock joke. He promptly falls asleep as soon as the last round of laughter escapes his throat.

++

Patrick wakes up for the second time that Sunday at eleven thirty, which is more of a reasonable hour. He rolls out of bed on autopilot and realizes he’s still wearing his burnt orange button-up and his black pants. The only things he seems to have had half a mind to remember to remove were his shoes and his belt. Which isn’t bad considering, oh. His mind stops feeling so cheery as he remembers the night before. He rubs at his eyes and strips out of the clothes before tossing them into his plastic laundry hamper in his closet. It’s getting close to the brim and he makes a fleeting mental note to possibly do some laundry tonight while he’s cramming in fifteen annotated pages of The Fountainhead before Advanced English tomorrow morning.

He wraps himself in his bathrobe and grabs his shower caddy as he steps into rubber flip flops. Twenty minutes later he’s clean and his hair is damp and cool against his head. He pulls on blue jeans and a plain black t-shirt and sits thoughtfully on his bed. Still no physical Joe, but his clothes from the night before are now crumpled on the foot of his bed and his flip-flops that he religiously keeps by the door are gone. Weekends are basically free-time. Rarely do students have to be anywhere and only a few faculty members are ever around to tell boys to behave correctly (and even most of them are just too laid back to parent the boys on weekends). 

Patrick surveys his room, trying to decide how to spend his Sunday. He could finish that reading now, or make a significant dent in the bucket-load of French work he has, or get a little research done for the group European History project they’ve been assigned. He sighs. Or not. Patrick thinks maybe he’ll call his dad and ride his bike over. Maybe he’ll just ride his bike into downtown and sit at a coffee shop and write lyrics till the sun goes down, which he’s been known to do before.

There’s a knock on his door before he can make a decision and he heaves himself up to answer it. And of course, Patrick’s bane of existence is standing right in his doorway, dressed in tight blue jeans and a muted brown Lacoste polo. Peter isn’t really smiling, but the corners of his mouth are lifted and he holding a large paper bag with the top crinkled over a few times. Peter tips his chin at the space behind Patrick.

“Joe here?”

“No.”

“Good, can I?” Peter gestures inside. Patrick steps aside begrudgingly and lets Peter in. Patrick doesn’t shut the door but turns to Peter as he sets the paper bag down on Patrick’s tidy desk. Patrick looks at the bag in question while Peter hops onto Patrick’s bed.

“I brought us lunch. Do you know how many groundskeepers I had to ask before I found a decent Chinese place open before noon?” Patrick gives in and smiles a little.

“How’d you know?” Peter shrugs.

“Takes one to know one. Figured you’d like Chinese food.” Patrick smiles at that too, to his surprise. Peter pats the space beside him on the bed.

“I’ve heard of dinner and then that sort of proposition, but never lunch.” Patrick jokes openly. Peter laughs aloud.

“Afternoon delight. But for today, platonically, if you will.” 

“I suppose.” And Patrick takes a seat gingerly beside Peter, cross-legged. “So what’s up?” Patrick asks.

“Well, for one, I feel really…I don’t know, about last night.” They look confidently at each other, which makes Patrick soften.

“Frightened?” Patrick suggests.

“No, I was going more for ‘bad,’ but that seemed like a terribly insipid word. Because that’s not really how I feel at all about some parts of it.” Peter gnaws on the inside of his lips before continuing. “I’m glad I told you everything I did, because it really needed to be said, you know? And,” he chooses his words carefully, “I’m not sorry, per se, for kissing you. But I’m sorry I wasn’t…well received.”

“I’m sorry I…reacted the way I did,” Patrick says.

“It’s okay. No one’s ever physically run away from me before. So,” Peter shrugs, “you go down in the book for that at least.” Patrick laughs breathily, blushing a bit and looking down at his right hand, which is companionably close to Peter’s left. “So why did you run away? If you don’t mind me asking.” It’s Patrick’s turn to shrug as he gathers his thoughts.

“I’d never…thought about everything like that before. About the physical part of,” his voice drops “being gay.”

“I wish we could have talked about this before I acted so irrationally.” Peter’s fingers brush electric against Patrick’s as he shifts on the bed. Peter looks him in the eye and bites his lips again, inching away slowly.

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Patrick concedes and grabs Peter’s hand in his own, intertwining their fingers. Peter looks down at their hands, vibrantly touching, open and okay. He cracks a wide, toothy smile. 

“So what’d you bring me?” Patrick lets go and saunters up to the bag on his desk. He brings it back to the bed and unrolls the top.

“Chicken Teriyaki, Shrimp Lo Mein, an egg roll and a fortune cookie.” Peter lists as Patrick pulls out little folded white containers, checking inside each of them. It turns out Peter can barely hold chopsticks, yet alone actually use them to bring food to his mouth. He ends up poking Patrick with them while they talk about whatever comes to mind while they eat happily on Patrick’s bed. Patrick, who is rather proficient with wielding chopsticks, seizes the opportunity to be flirty and cute by feeding Peter bites of food squeezed between his wooden sticks. Peter always wraps his lips around them fully and then drags off nice and slow. Both boys end up blushing far too much to be normal. Peter goes to open his fortune cookie between bites of Lo Mein.

“No!” Patrick stops him, setting down his chopsticks.

“What?”

“It’s bad luck to eat the fortune cookie before you’re finished.”

“Sorry, Confucius.” When they do finish eating, Peter tears into his fortune cookie like there’s no tomorrow. 

“This is my favorite part,” Peter explains, chomping on the smooth texture of the fortune cookie in his mouth. He swallows and then reads his fortune aloud.

“Rule your desires or they will rule you.” Patrick laughs.

“That’s just a little freaky and omniscient,” Patrick says after he swallows his own mouthful. “Mine says, ‘Conventional wisdom is often neither.’” Peter looks off thoughtfully.

“I like it.”

“It’s not really a fortune though.” Patrick starts tossing the empty containers and disposable utensils into the paper sack. Peter sets the bag on the floor and flops backwards so that he’s lying on Patrick’s bed on top of the neatly tucked-in sheets. He holds his arms out, motioning silently for Patrick to lay back into them. Patrick lets himself be hugged into Peter’s body. While they cuddle on his bed, Patrick hopes and prays that Joe is nowhere near their dorm, maybe got distracted by an iced game of squash where he’s playing barefoot, flip-flops left on the sidelines while his bare toes turn purple. Peter is warm and certain, soft and protective.

Patrick likes that there’s no pressure, happy that this is the first time he’s laying with Peter and he’s comfortable just like this. Patrick places a reciprocal hand on Peter’s bicep, stroking tiny crescents with his thumb. Peter smiles and looks relieved.

++

Peter leaves his room at three for soccer conditioning, much to Patrick’s dismay.

(“But it’s October.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Your season doesn’t start till _January_.”

“Not nearly enough time. I need to go.”

“You can’t stay five more minutes?”)

After Peter leaves, Patrick calls his dad and tells him that he’s gay. His dad gives a breathy laugh that, over the phone, could be interpreted as a sigh of relief.

(“Why’d you have to tell me over the phone? You couldn’t have ridden your bike over here?”

“Why?”

“So I could hug you, Patrick.”)

After the long and deep conversation with his dad, which included one moment where Patrick thought he was going to cry with joy and two moments where his dad tried to launch into the “just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you can have unprotected sex” talk, Patrick opens his French binder to the assignment Monsieur Bedeau gave them days ago. Patrick has to take the question one section at a time, like hopscotch, but the basic translation is something like “A statue cannot be constructed by itself, it must be assembled by others. Write about the people in your life that have shaped you.” 

Patrick writes about “the men in his life:” his grandfather, his dad and Peter. As he checks over his journal entry for appropriate accents and punctuation, Patrick feels a rush of fresh blood coursing through his body, fingertip to heels. He feels certain and right, real and infinitely in place.


End file.
